The Hegemony of the So-Called "T-Shirt Bra"

{ THE BEND {
11TH EDITION
The Bend
11th Edition
Managing Editor: Christine Texeira
Editors: Jace Brittain, Mari Christmas, Leo Costigan, Paul Cunningham,
Emily Grecki, Dev Varma, Kaushik Viswanath, Rachel Zavecz
Design & Layout: Christine Texeira
Layout: Dev Varma
Copyediting: Jace Brittain, Mari Christmas, Thirii Myint, Kaushik Viswanath
Cover Artwork: Jayne Marek, Portrait of the Artist in Blue and Pink Pieces
Copyright (c) 2014 by The Bend
Rights revert to author upon publication
This is the 2014 installment of the showcase for the work of students, alumni,
and friends of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame—
the journal known, in previous incarnations as Dánta, La Rue Barbarian, and
The Rhubarbarian. This year’s edition will simultaneously appear online.
The Bend does not read unsolicited manuscripts.
Printed in the United States
{ LET TER FROM TH E EDITO RS {
Dear Readers,
Don’t look now (Oh okay, do!), but you’ve got a little treat in your hands:
a sliver slice of the pie that is the past and present body of the Creative
Writing MFA program at Notre Dame. We’re proud and honored and well,
just pleased as Mr. Punch to find ourselves swimming in such a delicious
lineage of talented writers who’ve been shaped, dotted, and baked here.
As the metaphor crumbles, please savor the scrumptious writing of some
of our former and current students. Read, smack your lips, ask politely for
more. On the way, trust us: we’re bakers.
Sincerely,
The Editors
{
CONTENTS
{
art }
JAYNE MAREK
Scurve 26
Watercosmos 48
Lattice Shadows 66
poetry }
BETH TOWLE
Selections from Huckleberry Queen9
MARCELA SULAK
The Walls of Your House 20
CYNDI VANDER VEN
The Hand that Holds the Glass 22
DESMOND KON ZHICHENG-MINGDÉ
xún xù jiàn jìn :: please take note of the proper sequence
30 qīng ér yì jǔ :: something easily done 32
xún guī dǎo jǔ :: all rules and regulations to be observed 33
diān pèi liú lí :: once even he was destitute and searching 35
chuān yún liè shí :: loud and clear 37
hùn wéi yī tán :: conflation to confuse matters 38
JAMES MATTHEW WILSON
Ecce Homo46
C KUBASTA
The Hegemony of the so-called “T-Shirt Bra” 54
The Other 56
MONICA MODY
Two Pages from May, Pigeon Point of 2013 59
DREW KALBACH
I. The Burial of the Dead 61
anyone who wants to defecate in this place is advised to
move along,
63
MARY DIXON
Melons 74
AMY IRISH
The Nature of the Mother, Part One 76
The Nature of the Mother, Part Two 78
The Nature of the Mother, Part Three 79
SARAH BOWMAN
The Now Years 81
prose }
TONY D’SOUZA
In the Wilderness 16
JOHN CRAWFORD
A Toast to the Lost Writers 24
MARGARET EMMA BRANDL
Fugue 28
Dorothy 29
STEVE OWEN
Five Fathers 40
DANI RADO
The Man with a Tree Growing Out of His Head 50
JACE BRITTAIN
Perhaps 68
CONTRIBUTORS86
{ B et h Towle {
S elections from Huckle berry Q ue en
O R PHAN I N G
Aren’t we all the orphans of descending?
Don’t we all lash our futures to the ones
who treat us worst. Our bellies full of the ones
who will love us least. Our bellies
full of the ones unable to get out fast enough to rid
themselves of our sucking weak bodies?
9
TH E D EATH O F TH E H U C KLEB ER RY Q U EEN
When the end comes,
I hope to be damned up with sweat
on a summer day,
wrapped in muslin and laid out
for every watching eye
on the porch, or in the window
of a room where it is cool
and everything is slightness.
When the end comes,
I want ice on the back of the tongue.
I want the biggest stars.
The night should come on quick
and with a bit of a headache.
The moon should be luminous
and I should know
that it’s the last one I’ll see.
When the end comes,
I want to be lost. I want to lose
some piece of something I loved
so that I know I loved it.
I want to be broke open
with wanting and broke down
with getting what I want.
10
I want everything to be enraged
by desire. I want everyone
to be enraged by desire.
I want desire. I want rage.
When the end comes,
I want to be nowhere
to be found.
I want to be drying out
in a tent a mile away.
I want my guts to be slick
with want, still slick
with the sweet spit of it trapped in me,
which is how I like it best.
Which is how I want it.
11
LOVER,
she has split apart the breaths of innumerable men. Undoes
bodies by the dozens, rends hearts, knocks out their tongues. Tricks to
learn and she’s learned them all. That it takes the right eye, the softest
word, the fullest dress. Takes a deviled hand, an angelic mouth, a human
ear. She plucks the strings that sound the loudest. Majors all the minor
chords. Plays them out, lets the last note linger.
12
M ELO DY
Black gown drunk again,
shoved out of doorways,
blinking at the half light coming
from the cabin.
Be quicker than the last note,
be quicker than the crescendo
which always comes so fast
and loose and split apart at the edges.
Edge me to the worst part.
Let me get so close
that the song slices right through me.
Let the slay of chords
tie me to the bedpost.
13
TH E B I RTH O F TH E H U C KLEB ER RY Q U EEN
I rose through boil,
heavy-headed, a little bit scarred.
Raised lines in the flesh
behind my knees, between my toes.
Burnt lips, red hands.
I rose through boil,
dumped the dolls in the fire,
strung ribbons from hangedman bones.
Turned from milk.
I rose through boil
and sweated out the kindness.
I came to the big house
and left a message on silver platter.
I came to the woodshed.
I took up the axe.
I rose through boil
and rolled the dice.
Friends in the cupboard,
friends on the stairs.
Music like heartburn coming
from the foyer no one can
return to.
14
I rose through boiled
sheets piled by the backdoor.
I rose from the bed.
I rose from the lake.
I rose from the dirt
so that I could be
born and burnt again.
15
{ Tony D’S ou z a {
I N TH E WI LD ER N ES S
It’s been two years since I published my last novel. Warner Bros.
came calling on that one, Todd Phillips was set to direct, the Duplass
brothers quickly churned out the script; it was very exciting and I went
out to LA a few times. Then everything went silent. My wife and I had a
bruising divorce, Houghton passed on my last manuscript, my agent and I
parted ways. Now I’m in a nasty legal fight over custody of my kids.
I often think of my friend Chris Napolitano. He was the long-time
editor of Playboy, handpicked and groomed by Hef. I had a run when
I published stories there and would head up to their Midtown offices
whenever I was in New York. It was beyond great; Chris was always
dapper and handsome and dressed to the nines, a real sparkplug of a guy
regaling me with stories of who he’d met, who he’d published. We’d have
lunch and Elvis Costello would be at the next table; I’d leave Playboy with
bottles of booze and Playboy embossed shot glasses, magazines and tales
of the models; then I’d meet friends in the Village and pass out my swag
and stories. It was the most heroic I’d ever been.
Something happened around 2009 when everything in publishing
was going to shit; there was a discrimination lawsuit against Chris by a
former Playboy employee, the New York Post covered all the salacious
details. Chris was soon ousted, I heard he divorced, it was a real fall from
grace and I’d smoke a cigarette late at night and sometimes wonder what
would become of him. I sent him a few emails and they bounced back.
Two years later I found him on Google; he was editing something
called Indian Country Today. What the fuck was that? I tracked down his
new email and sent him a note; he invited me up to his Indian Country
16
Today offices, which were also in Midtown.
Chris was happy to see me and the offices were insane. Whatever
Indian Country Today was, there was money in it. The place was a stately
spread, luxuriously appointed in dark wood, even better than Playboy.
Chris was odd that day, dodging my questions about his personal life;
perhaps he should have been. There was a man in his office, a big bruiser
of a guy sitting in the corner in a plaid work shirt and braids and quietly
mulling over some paper in his hands. The impression I had was of a
Native American mafia enforcer studying a racetrack tip sheet.
Indian Country Today, Chris explained as he led me around, was a
nationally distributed startup glossy magazine, a weekly, covering Native
American issues. He had been brought in to do it. Starting a glossy was
unbelievable at a time when the other magazines were struggling and
folding. Chris introduced me to his editorial staff, then his art department,
right around fifteen people. At the end of each introduction he told me,
“A wonderful talent. Formerly of Playboy.”
“Where’s the money from?” I kept asking Chris, who had managed
to save all these former Playboy people and put out a handsome magazine
that had his creative fingerprints all over it. He didn’t answer that question
either. The only thing he told me was that one of the magazine’s main
distribution cities was Washington DC. It was easy enough to figure out on
the long elevator ride down: the Indians were funding the magazine with
their casino money; their lobbyists were using it to support their legislative
efforts on the Hill. Then something else dawned on me. Indian casinos
weren’t going anywhere. Chris Napolitano at Indian Country Today might
outlast Playboy in Midtown, which is in fact what’s happened.
*
I’ve had to scramble since my divorce, teaching when I can get a
visiting gig, hustling after sporadic magazine work and living out of a
suitcase, and my kids are often far away. Other jobs have come to me on
angels’ wings; I was recently invited to lead a tour group to India; twelve
days and fourteen people, it was stimulating and lucrative and exhausting
and when the group finally left, I stayed. I took a room at the Panjim Inn,
17
a historic colonial hotel in the Goan capital’s Latin Quarter. The plan was
to finally start a novel, but my mind continued to be seized with dread,
and all I did was sleep.
I needed to just keep moving and soon was on a filthy train, rumbling
south through the night, out from Goa and into Karnataka, along the
Konkan Coast, where I once set a novel. Its palm trees and villages stand
along rivers that pour down from the Western Ghats and slip into the
Indian Ocean like warm, opened veins. The train was mostly empty; the
two transvestites who were working it, clearly not women and dressed
in ratty saris, kept returning to me, caressing my shoulder where I sat
to shame me into giving them money. Where did they live? I wondered.
Where did they sleep? They spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand,
teasing me, and I finally pulled out my wallet and paid them to go away.
I stepped off the train in Mulki, a small village two stops north of
the port city of Mangalore, found a $4 room at the bus stand and in the
morning went looking for my uncle Francis. He’s old now, nearly eighty;
he’s lived here since fleeing Kuwait before the invading Iraqis during the
First Gulf War, losing thirty years of labor and savings as a migrant worker
when he did.
He’s a snarled old knot of a man, mostly bones and belly, living alone
in a small monsoon-beaten house in a one-acre grove of coconut trees. He
wears a rag like a pirate’s head wrap, is missing teeth. His unshaven face
always has the hardened look of suspicion. His Arab wife died decades
ago; a daughter was lost to a brain tumor. His son working in the Gulf
sends him $100 a month. Selling coconuts brings in another $20.
I first came here twenty years ago, when I was nineteen; even then
Francis seemed ancient. We’d gone out in the canoe night after night, set
nets for crabs, drank neat rum, sang old songs in Konkani. The most recent
time, three years ago, the ex-wife and kids were with me and Francis and
his house were far too grim for all that and we’d had our taxi wait.
On the Mulki River, everything in my life has always felt far away,
and I’ve always imagined that one day I’ll stay. Poor Hindus live on the
islands in the river; I remember a girl in a gold salwar being ferried toward
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us once on a raft. She’d been standing, statuesque, white flowers in her
hair; I’d had my shirt off; I’d stood in the canoe and cast out a net in her
direction. She’d blushed because she’d understood I was casting the net
at her.
Those days were gone and of course I had my children to return to
on the other side of the world. This time, Francis met me at his gate when
I hollered, eyed me with suspicion. I explained those first nights fishing
with him, other times, the short recent visit when I’d brought my kids. The
fog soon lifted and he said to me, “That’s right, isn’t it? You’re that one
who is coming often?”
He was wearing a lungi, the pirate’s head wrap. My visits have always
meant a small windfall for him and he became animated and busy. “I’ve
sold the canoe,” he told me as he marched around the compound with a
long bamboo coconut hook, “but no matter. I will call a man and he will
bring one. We’ll take rum and bring the nets and drink and do the singing.
You remember the singing?”
I asked Francis what he needed and he said he’d like to eat meat,
have a drink. So we spent the late morning and early afternoon in the airconditioned bus stand restaurant. We reminisced about those old nights
on the river and soon he was laughing, singing loud, indecent songs,
spilling his beer, pounding his hand on the table, rice falling from his
mouth. A waiter asked us to quiet down; Francis grew maudlin, leaned
into the table, told me again his long tale of the war and his losses.
“What about the canoe?” I said later.
“Yes, yes,” he said and composed himself, wiping his mouth with
his hand. “I will call the man and we’ll bring the rum and drink and do
the singing.”
When we left, we needed a rickshaw, and by the time we reach the
gate, Francis was asleep on my shoulder. I slipped $100 in rupees into the
pocket of his shirt, helped him into his bed, carefully tucked in the corners
of his mosquito net. Out on the bank of the river, the palm trees and water
were as beautiful as they had always been. I didn’t wait for him to wake
to say goodbye.
19
{ Ma rc ela Sula k {
TH E WALLS O F YO U R H O US E
Do not attract attention to yourself in public. This is one of the fundamental
rules of good breeding. Shun conspicuous manners, conspicuous clothes, a loud
voice, staring at people, knocking into them, talking across anyone—in a word
do not attract attention to yourself. Do not expose your private affairs, feelings
or innermost thoughts in public. You are knocking down the walls of your house
when you do.
— Emily Post, Etiquette
The water cups quake, the canisters of beer cheer, the fire department
reservoirs, the salt in the sea shakes.
The bougainvillea’s got the willies, the shoe horns curl across the island of
Curaçao on New Year’s Eve.
The doilies flutter on thick steel nails, on the walls of Morris’s living room
the painted rabbis shimmy and the plaster crumbles, everyone shakes but
Morris.
Morris is old, his companion beautiful (he is an artist and fancies himself
the nightingale in Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale about unrequited love).
The stoppered perfumes in the duty-free stores long to reach the shore,
the silks, cigarettes and cigars swirl, the boxes of tea and the seed pearls
agitate.
Everyone has a bit of the demon inside, that’s why we can’t stand still
when city hall, the courthouse, the police department, the customs offices
and banks line up behind the thick red ropes of firecrackers, which roar
and wave like an escaped fire hose, whipping the demons of jealousy and
pettiness, of meanness and spite.
I tremble with the cornpone, the iguana soup.
The oyster crackers crack, the floating vegetable market undulates, along
20
with the udders of goats.
Even the flamingoes tremble in their sunset-colored pools.
21
{ Cy nd i Va nd er Ven {
TH E HAN D THAT H O LDS TH E GL AS S
Light meets the neat edge
of the gurney where gauzy
sand meets the sea.
The Costa Rican sun spins
back on its axis, arcs along
the parallel of my body, mapped
points where head and feet
meet the brilliant line.
I reach for you, eyes shaded
against blindness, and Joan Didion
hands me a glass of whiskey
across the kitchen counter,
her pale hands smoothing cool
stone as she talks to John,
sagged in his chair, reading
the Times and making small talk.
Only when he does not answer
does she turn, shifting the question’s
weight, drawn to that familiar
posture of sleep, years of it to lean
on, and finds he’s left her, newly
birthed, rapscallion bachelor again,
the paper slack in his lap.
22
If I could shift the weight
of him, spill the held words
back onto the page, move
this dark, limitless point,
then he would reach for the drink
I hold, wonder at Joan’s hand held
as it is against her thin throat,
surprised at the Times, all ajumble.
If I could rearrange these words,
then you and I would skim
time at light speed,
ride this brilliance leaning
into the unseen thing.
But love does not alter,
and to try could make us strangers:
you clipping coupons
from Diario la República over
breakfast; I sluicing for truth
through la Nación at dinner, foreigners
in our own country, stars ajumble.
Rather, we’ll stretch toward the warm
sun and the simple words we utter
through the days and years of us, and find
from first one of our ends to the other
the hand that holds the glass.
23
{ Joh n Cr aw ford {
A TOAST TO TH E LOST WR ITERS
If you’re going to be a writer, you must resign yourself to times of
loneliness.
That’s why I like to write in coffee shops. The work is still solitary,
but at least I’m surrounded by people. The coffee is a nice bonus. Drink
enough caffeine, and everything feels like a good idea. Doubts disappear.
You’re ready to tackle a novel then and there.
Writing didn’t always feel so lonely. As a newspaper reporter, I
bonded with my comrades in arms on the staff. Our desks were bunched
together in a crowded newsroom. Many of us were in our early twenties,
just out of college. Others were veterans, older and more cynical, who had
covered way too many shootings and house fires.
We made little money as we cranked out our stories. It wasn’t
easy. Working against constant deadlines made for a stressful life. We
met up in dive bars to blow it off and complain about the school boards,
police chiefs, and county commissioners we covered. One editor called
mandatory happy hours on many a Friday, and at one dive we frequented,
the Square Bar, the paper’s veteran photographer had his own reserved
seat.
In grad school, I met other writers. We were true believers earning
our MFAs, and our weeks centered around writing workshops where we
supported each other in the face of the inevitable criticisms that came,
sometimes constructive, sometimes harsh. We wrote into the wee hours in
computer labs, attended the readings of masters whose talent seemed so
far out of reach, and hung out in townie bars, drinking round after round
and discussing movies, music, and this elusive thing we were all chasing.
24
Together against the odds, we cheered when someone was published and
celebrated when we finished our theses.
Now, years later, some of those creative writers have given up on
it. They don’t want to return to those hard, dark spaces or, swamped by
work and kids, they don’t bother trying. As for the young reporters, many
moved on to PR and marketing, jobs with less stress and more pay. A
newspaper’s grind wears you out—that is, if you can even find a job in
newspapers anymore.
I feel sad thinking about those lost writers and reporters. Me, I have
family responsibilities now, but I’m still at it. I write and edit stories for a
college magazine and squeeze in freelance and fiction pieces when I can. I
don’t hang out with fellow practitioners so much anymore, but if I can get
out of the house, I head to the coffee shop. Grabbing a table and power
outlet, I’ve given up many a Saturday and Sunday afternoon sipping,
typing, and trying to wrap my mind around some piece and wrestle it to
the ground.
While my coffee cools, I look at the people around me. Some gab,
some read, and many stare at their own computers. It’s nice to have
their company, but we never exchange words. This isn’t a workshop or
a newsroom, and we share no common purpose. They’re all strangers to
me.
Bombed on coffee, I often think about the lost writers. Do they miss
it? Does any of their old fire still smolder? Maybe it can’t be put out.
Maybe it waits to be reignited. I hope so. I hope they pick it up again, put
themselves out there.
At the Square Bar, we held many send-offs for the reporters moving
on. Toasting them, we lifted shots and gulped them down. Sitting in the
coffee shop now, I toast the lost writers with what remains in my cup. I
wish them well, though I miss them, and I miss the wonderful words they
used to write.
25
26
SCURVE by Jayne Marek
27
{ Ma rga ret E m ma Br a nd l {
FU GU E
The lights make halos on the wall and turn the doorway a soft orange. My
clothes hung on a rack for days, sometimes with the window open. I type
words and send them into space but space is quiet and wind blows the
dead plants and someone on the porch is smoking. I sat in an airport for
seven hours or more and there was nothing but a haze outside the glass.
No matter where we go all the air we breathe is killing us but sometimes
it will kill us faster. Beer bottles and beer cans and wine bottles and box
wine and spirits in their various bottles and in the end I have nothing but
fear, nothing but the corner on the ottoman and the reflection of lights on
my phone. Someday we will have lost everyone we once loved. We will
wait in airports with no one to fly home to.
28
DO ROTHY
The walks you took through woods and fields, the cow you nursed and
paraded at the show, the tornado-nights spent in the basement—whistling
creak, house-noises. A refuge for other nights, when the TV-glow and
plastic clutter made your Plato’s cave. In the morning you wondered if there
was ever anything other than shadows of tricycles and rainbow stacking
rings; ever anything beyond the noises of feet on the kitchen floor, on the
second-floor stairs. To return to your farm days, to your vegetable sales:
soft earth, wooden trays, aligning the carrots in rows. Smooth root-flesh,
warmth: the perfect eye-flaws of a tuber; the translucence of a lettuceleaf; the dirt-smudges of a cauliflower. If only tomorrow you could wake
up in your bed and find that it was only just a dream.
29
{ D e sm ond Kon Z h ich eng- M ingd é {
XÚN XÙ JIÀN JÌN :: PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE
PROPER SEQUENCE
Dr. Eichelberger had a habit of rotating his head, to get his blood
circulating, he said. He did this frequently while he was saying something,
usually something he found difficult to say, like an assessment, which
wasn’t forthcoming of therapists in general. Or a self-help method to take
home, like self-administering antihistamines for hay fever. The idea of
cognitive therapy actually working got him into a tangle, as if any possible
success of thinking one’s way out of life’s problems was a long shot,
something he needed to wrap his head around. Narrative therapy was
his modus operandi, and he was known to be good at it. Dr. Eichelberger
took his time with letting his clients reveal their own pasts, their thoughts
about different life situations, even current affairs, if they were into that.
They would understand their neuroses better, and everyone had neuroses.
What were Dr. Eichelberger’s neuroses, Gigi wondered. She asked him
once, and all he gave was a smile, which already seemed to be something
of an effort on his part. This one-way street of communication wasn’t
choice for Gigi, but it seemed to counterpoint the kinds of communication
she enjoyed with other men, which was reciprocal. Not always happy
circumstances, of equal relations, but at the very least, two people
were talking to each other, learning more about each other. Even if one
inevitably seemed more keen or needy. Or in the moment. There was an
acorn right at the tip of her forefinger, by the left. It seemed to teeter on
30
its point, its embroidery a bit frayed. So many people must have told their
stories on this couch. So many memories have filled this room, and how
many have receded to the place from which they came.
31
QĪNG ÉR YÌ JǓ :: SOMETHING EASILY DONE
It’s not common for a therapist to start a session with food. Dr. Eichelberger
made this another habit. He’d offer assorted hors d’oeuvres, colorful
curiosities on a silver tray or porcelain dish. Deli meats, with a wedge
of cheese. Sliced from a Pimiento or Pepper loaf. Cod roe, or sometimes
even Sevruga caviar. Freshly toasted bruschetta. Beside it, a shallow bowl
of olive oil. With the bruschetta, he had the habit of picking them up with
his forefinger and third finger, the way chopsticks do. He took three for
himself, a kind number he said, after which he knocked back a tequila
shot. Alcohol was also permitted during therapy, a technique to loosen
his clients around the edges, get them to drop their guard and speak
with less inhibition, thereby committing more deeply to the process. A
healthy method, he said. He made sure not to call his clients “patients,”
this Gigi overheard once when he was speaking to another doctor. He
had recommended a “patient” to a bona fide asylum, using the word
out of carelessness, then correcting himself quickly. Were these serious
cases? What did they do to warrant his forwarding their case to another
specialist? Were they violent there, in the room? Were they a danger to
themselves, or to their loved ones? Or worse, to larger society? “That was
a complicated case study,” Dr. Eichelberger said to Gigi before spooning
some roe into his mouth. He said case study. Not case. Again, as if he’s
put this man in a separate box. The box had the same shape and color, but
it had been placed in a different room.
32
XÚN GUĪ DǍO JǓ :: ALL RULES AND REGULATIONS
TO BE OBSERVED
“So, sex was never an enjoyable activity for you, is that correct?” The
phone rang, its loud ring making Dr. Eichelberger leap to his feet, stagger
to his desk as if shocked at his own forgetfulness to leave it off the hook.
He took the call anyway, an important one it seemed. His back faced Gigi,
as if an invisible wall had formed between doctor and client. He spoke
casually about another client. Gigi felt like a patient, so that’s what the
distinction felt like. An alterity is what Geronimo would have recognized it
as. Gigi turned to her side, still lying on the couch, and picked up an openfaced sandwich. There was beef tongue on it, and a poached egg. She
took some onions from the adjacent sandwich, and placed it on her own,
to mask the taste of the meat. She also added pepper. Dr. Eichelberger’s
desk had neat stacks on it. Everything was organized, as to be expected of
a doctor. But one cupboard against the left wall was filled with every kind
of thing. A real mess, and it seemed that was the one place he allowed
such ill discipline, or abandon, depending on the way you looked at it.
There was a large corkboard near his desk. Seated in his swivel chair, he
would push himself with his legs to reach it, and retrieve a picture from
it, ever so often. It was a collage of pictures. Were they family portraits?
Were they his clients? There were newspaper cuttings. A crossword, an
old one. Unfinished. There were pages torn from books. Many of them
were paintings. Gigi recognized one. It was a piece by Anselm Kiefer. The
one with the white cot near a window. The window seemed to belong to
an attic, the ceiling being so low. There are no people in this work. Closer
33
to the viewer, it no longer feels like crawlspace. It’s about Parsifal, and
his quest for the Holy Grail, but Gigi didn’t know this then. The cot is
Parsifal’s, but it might as well have been Gigi’s.
34
DIĀN PÈI LIÚ LÍ :: ONCE EVEN HE WAS DESTITUTE
AND SEARCHING
Dr. Eichelberger’s wife lived in Quebec, where she could live close to
Frenchness, she said, and so her roots. Gigi only knew of her through
her conversations with Dr. Eichelberger. She seemed nice enough, went
to college but never finished to open a bakery. “She was good at it,” Dr.
Eichelberger said, betraying his fondness for her. “I was in college. Still
young and insistent on remaining naïve. There’s the terrible resistance to
bending to the ways of the world at that age, don’t you think? To ignore
all the adults and their finger wagging and open warnings about the big,
bad world. And how it’ll swallow you up. To be careful, and have your
wits about you. No one wants to become that jaded person. No one wants
to become that suffering fool wagging that limp finger like a know-all.
But we grow into that role we’ve abhorred all our lives.” He opened an
album, and brought it to the couch. In it were pages of photographs he’d
taken of the cakes his wife had made. The cupcakes were charming.
They were works of art, the detail astonishing. “She was an inventor,”
Dr. Eichelberger said. “She created things all the time, and her life was
infused with that raw energy. Of being so close to life, its sheer force.
Just standing next to her, you could feel the world rush up to her. And
her hands. They turned everything to gold. She didn’t just make cakes,
she was good at doing hair, she also worked at the garment factory, and
35
quickly got promoted to design clothes for a line. She had two thin belts
that she wore with everything. And she looked lovely in a dress, especially
when she twirled to show me the front and back.” Gigi knew how he felt.
That he wasn’t born with that same joy. That he didn’t have the Creator’s
spirit. He pretty much said it in those words. He said it one day to Gigi,
pouring himself a glass of vodka, almost to the brim as if the glass wasn’t
tall enough. He said all he did was try to repair something in other people
—all he did was open their minds, and take a look inside.
36
CHUĀN YÚN LIÈ SHÍ :: LOUD AND CLEAR
Dr. Eichelberger segmented his life into neat rectangles. His recollections
seemed to frame themselves according to the number of times he had
to move, or overhaul a place, upon which his wife would make a visit.
To peel around the front door, step into the house, spend an hour sizing
up the space, then moving in as if she’d never insisted on anything at all.
The windows had grills, and one-way mirrored glass. The kitchen top
could not be marble because it was too porous. The drawers had to roll
out smoothly, and lock into place when shut, without the slightest sound.
All the crockery matched. As long as it was blue—any kind of blue—it
belonged. Once, she realized a blue saucer was really more green than
blue, and tossed it into the bin, then retrieved it for the neighbour’s cat.
“The wooden laminate flooring was a nightmare,” Dr. Eichelberger said.
“When the washer sprung a leak, the laundry room flooded. The water
got under the flooring into the seam between it and the older tiles. In six
months, the floorboards swelled, and some dislodged.” Dr. Eichelberger
pried apart a couple of them, and beneath was mold. Its green sickened
her. She moved out two days after, saying she felt the whole house was
mildewed. That she couldn’t live in a space she couldn’t see.
37
HÙN WÉI YĪ TÁN :: CONFLATION TO CONFUSE
MATTERS
“The invisible frightened her,” Dr. Eichelberger said, on his way back from
a hidden door in the wall. The door led to another small room, and all Gigi
could see was a row of steel cabinets. When he shut the door, the door
became the wall again. On it was a poster, another framed reproduction.
It was a Piet Mondrian, nothing familiar to Gigi. The thin-lined ellipse hit
the edges of the frame, as if ready to burst out from its confines. Within it
were various lines, all as thin as the circumference, the lines criss-crossing
each other. The lines drew pathways. There was one almost complete
square near the top, divided into four small squares. There seemed an exit
to this labyrinth out the bottom of the ellipse. It looked like the Empire
State as well, and looking at the picture that way, the criss-crossing lines
looked like old warplanes. “The title of the piece is ‘Pier and Ocean,’”
Dr. Eichelberger told Gigi. “That’s not a building but the pier. But yes,
the ocean looks like it’s carving out an internal territory… What wasn’t
immediately comprehensible to my wife frightened her. She was a tactile
person, a person who needed to be in touch with reality. I eventually got a
contractor to strip out the flooring, to redo it. Beneath it, over the original
tiles was a kind of floor mural. She’d painted all over the floor. It was a
thick, black paint meant for wood, not cement. From the front door, it
looked like the face of a man. Or a map of a part of the world. There were
38
islands. One seemed to be hilly. It was filled with hills. The Tree of Life
was in its own circle in the middle of this. This also looked like an island in
the archipelago. I’m positive she drew herself into the picture. There was
an isthmus that looked like a half-open eye. That was her eye, I knew. And
it was looking back at me.
39
{ St eve O wen {
FIVE FATH ERS
My father’s death was a ten year death. During that span, his room
crowded with five fathers who jostled and stooged for my attention.
First Father: The Ten Year Father
The ten year father lies in bed for ten years. Bits of ten year body fall off,
or need removing. Occasionally a doctor comes in, leans over to sniff my
father’s toes. He delivers an opinion. After he delivers an opinion, he puts
his stethoscope against my chest. He shakes his head as if he can’t hear
anything. Terrific, he says. When the door slams on his way out, a toe falls
off the ten year father’s foot.
It looks like a small tree timbering over.
Timber!
Actually the top part of the toe puckers into a small yellow hole. I stare at
the yellow. I keep staring. The tone begins to wander. It warms. It cools. It
doesn’t stop changing tone.
The ten year father, during this invigorating convalescence, inflates like a
dictionary. The ten year father whistles like a Lifetime show. The ten year
father sobs like a pen. During this span, medicine bottles mountain his
dresser-top. I can see us in the mirror rolling down the mountain together.
There we are: rolling.
We roll.
40
We keep rolling.
There we go.
Giant medicine tablets fill the ten year father’s mouth. A giant glass of
water pours in. His ten year body sharpens and urinates. To change the
sheets, I place him on the ground. They come off with him, crumpled on
his back. When I peel them off, the skin is gone.
I can see inside the ten year father. My eyes keep staring. They stare.
They keep looking.
Second Father: Home Plate Father
The home plate father is always sliding into home plate. The home plate
father is the hero of the game. The home plate father is a pinstriped father.
He leaps on top of the dresser, knocking medicine bottles and pills around.
He moves to the far end of the dresser where he can catch some speed.
His cleated feet get a good fast start. His youthful body leaps from the
dresser and slides into the ten year father’s bed.
He scores the winning run! He scores the winning run! He scores the
winning run! He scores the winning run! He scores the winning run! He
scores the winning run! He scores the winning run! He scores the winning
run! He scores
I wait for the home plate father to get up and celebrate. He won’t. A dusty
bone has come out of his knee.
The home plate father will never play again. (Again.)
I come for a closer look. The bone is a pencil lead.
41
I push the lead back in, and the home plate father cheers. He leaps back
on top of the dresser. He leaps off.
He scores the winning run! (I push again.)
There he does it again!
(I keep pushing.)
Third Father: Uniform Father
The uniform father stands staring into a dark corner of the room. The
uniform father is nude. His body is smooth and unscarred as sandpapered
marble. The only marks on his body are goose bumps. The uniform
father’s butt trembles.
A spotlight shines on the uniform father’s gold curl head. He turns and
salutes. He marches back and forth. His balls jiggle. He stands, balls
swaying, in a rigid line. An army uniform clothes his body. He starts
telling the Dachau story.
The uniform father is among the first Allies in camp. He sees skeletons
waving rags from tall trees. He sees rotten bodies in fresh holes. He
executes camp guards, pointing a finger at them. A small door opens like
an elevator in each Nazi head. The uniform father’s body is covered in
viscera.
The Dachau story is the uniform father’s brother’s story. The uniform
father’s brother is the army brother. The army brother doesn’t tell the
Dachau story. The army brother talks about boats.
The uniform father spends the war on a medium-sized boat. The uniform
father delivers nondescript war supplies. The uniform father never talks
about those.
42
What are those supplies?
After the story is finished, the uniform father’s uniform disappears. He
begins marching and jiggling. He sways.
The uniform father has a handsome gold curl head.
Look at it go!
Fourth Father: Dollar Father
The dollar father showers the room with dollar bills. He cradles his belly
like a pregnant money sack.
A few bills slip from his belly. His eyes begin glittering like sweaty coins.
He begins yanking wads of cash from his belly. He throws the wads up in
the air. His belly sack wheezes as it empties.
When the dollars land, they’ve become season tickets. Baseball, football.
There they are.
In the front row. Over the dugout. The dollar father yells at the players on
the field. He tells the manager things.
Lying in bed, the ten year father gets covered in piles of tickets. The ten
year father smiles. His feet fall off. They slip between a pile of season
tickets on the floor.
The dollar father looks scared. His face begins to crumple up. It looks like
a paper testicle.
The dollar father hurries to the bank.
43
He withdraws the money from my account.
Fifth Father: The Killing Father
The ten year father is always asking about death. He says that it would
be good for death to come. He would like it to come now. I tell him that
he looks good in this bed. We, the other fathers and I, want him to live
forever.
This is a nice bed, I say.
Look at you in this bed!
I unclench my ten year father’s teeth. I push food inside. I water the ten
year father. The ten year father weeps. He never blooms; he un-wilts.
The ten year father cries. He weeps and cries. Cries, weeps. Weeps, cries.
It goes on like this for a while.
The cries.
The cries, cries, cries, cries, cries!
I think about killing the ten year father. I think about killing everyday.
I don’t. I let his tears pool in my paper coffee cup.
Have I always been like this?
Look at this cup of tears, I announce. These are mine now. I can drink
those.
Killing tears! (Brown ink.) The brown cools. It warms. Cools. (It doesn’t
stop.)
44
I stand and I stand there watching the killing father, who wears my face,
sit atop my ten year father.
He rides him. Yee, ha!
He rides and rides him. He rides him every day for ten years. When he
rides him, the ten year father shrinks. His giant hands hold the ten year
father’s tiny face. He places a kiss on the ten year mouth.
He gives a kiss every day. He kisses and kisses. Look at him kiss!
Smooch!
The killing father makes pain. This death grows more painful each day.
The pain grows. The death grows. It continues to grow and grow.
Like this.
The killing father never kills. He is only killing.
I collect tears from the ten year father. I collect tears. The room fills with
empty cups.
The ten year father is dying!
The ten year father is dying!
He dies. He dies. He dies. There he goes again.
He dies.
He is dying.
The ten year father never stops.
45
{ Ja m e s Mat t h ew W ils on {
ECCE H OMO
I have started asking for power.
My friends mostly.
I would like power of attorney
Or to be charged with feeding their golden retriever
while they are in Florida.
The two of them go there every year now.
I see them running on a beach.
Or sitting on blankets, reading.
When I picture the bronze-age fleece
of his chest, burnished in cocoa oil
the picture blots out
And I go back to thinking about me.
I’ve never been.
When they get back, I certainly don’t ask to see any pictures.
She just smiles while her husband writes out the check in the kitchen.
Her glossy lips beam.
She’s squatted down, darkened legs tightly balanced,
In no panty hose and the gray skirt she wears for air travel.
46
Her free hand is buried
In the shaggy, thick flank of the dog
Who’s already gone back to sleep.
That’s when I start to crave additional power.
The kind that gets you on a beach in Florida,
Proud and certain in the warm and waiting midnight
Of a tangled thatch of hair.
47
WATERCOSMOS by Jayne Marek
48
49
{ Da ni R a d o {
TH E M AN WITH A TR EE GROWI N G O UT O F
H IS H EAD
Everyone believes he’s sad, this man with the tree growing out
of his head. They offer him kind looks to his face and sympathetic
glances behind his back. They speak to him as if he’s a little slow, or
deaf, or someone he loves has just passed away. (They would never say
“died,” they would always say “passed away,” these people who look
sympathetically at the man with the tree growing out of his head.) That
is, when they speak to him, they speak in a deliberate monotone while
they reach out and gently squeeze his upper arm, but only for a moment,
not to offer him comfort so much as to show him, and everyone around
them, that they are not afraid to touch him, that they are not afraid they
might catch dumbness, or passed-away-ness, or tree-from-the-head-ness.
Though they are. Every arm squeeze, every nod, every smile is underlain
with a better-you-than-me.
Like the sun in eclipse, no one looks directly at the tree, at least
not for long, and so, at this dinner party as they stand in circles of
conversation, those in the circle with the man with the tree growing
out of his head look at everyone else first, study them all from shoes to
treeless crown as a momentary respite from the temptation to look at the
tree on top of his head.
When the man with a tree growing out of his head decides to chime
in (he is witty but they’d never be able to see that), they turn their bodies
slightly toward him but dart their eyes like furtive birds searching for
a place to land. To look this man in the eye, or anywhere on his face,
would be to look too close to the tree growing out of his head, and they
50
know if their gaze lands too near, they won’t not be able to resist the
gravitational pull.
So they stare at a spot on the ground and soften their focus as if
they’re pretending to listen to poetry. Instead they’re making a game of
deciding what a blurred knot in the hardwood floor most resembles. Is it
a bird? A climbing monkey? A distorted face? It is not a tree though, and
they can’t understand that the man with the tree is telling a story that is
both funny and self-effacing.
A bird—a bird you see!—carrying bramble in its beak, landed on
the tree growing out of his head as if she were going to build a nest, he
says and gestures to the crook of the tree limbs. The audience, released
from its self-imposed obeisance, finally looks up at the tree and takes it
all in, the thin white trunk of a birch rising from his skull, but not from
the center, as you’d imagine, but a little forward and a little to the left,
his left. It’s also not a tree as you’d imagine. It’s only eight inches tall
with a large black knot of a missing limb on the front and an abbreviated
branch jutting to the side with a single poised leaf attached.
Because of this, people who hear of the man with the tree growing
out of his head before they meet him are always a little disappointed.
When they hear of him, they can’t help but imagine a massive oak or
towering pine, or even a Christmas tree fully decorated, sprouting from
his head, and he balancing it perfectly like a woman carrying a basket
of fruit to some remote marketplace. Or a dancer with a bowl of fire. Or
Atlas with a tree instead of a world. They know, as you know, that Atlas
carried the world on his back, but still they’re both burdens.
And so the natural wonder that strangers feel when they pass him on
the street, flits around the dinner party guests but never settles . The host
had promised them a marvel and only delivered this tiny miracle. Along
with a bottle of wine or an appetizer, these guests brought expectations
that were bound to disappointment. This didn’t mean they didn’t want
to look, but they were also warned by the host, who is doing his best to
keep all the conversations polite, not to stare and not to wonder.
Right here! exclaims the man with the tree growing out of his head
51
as he points upwards to the branches, and the guests think, their pity
plumbing to even farther depths, But a bird couldn’t build a nest there.
It’s too small.
When the groups reshuffle and certain guests are freed from the
companionship of a man with a stunted trunk jutting from above his left
eye, they turn and stare behind his back as if they’re a magnifying glass
ready to spark a conflagration on top of his head.
But he isn’t sad, this man with the tree growing from his brow, not
even when birds land on it to build nests. In fact, this man with the tree
is in love. Nobody believes it, especially at this party, not because they
think he’s incapable of loving somebody, but they think no one is capable
of loving him. Well, maybe someone with a simple mind who’d think the
thing was a beanstalk sprouted from a tale she’d heard. Otherwise, his
only chance would be with a woman that’d claim to love him until she
satisfied her need for penitence, dreamed up over some past misdeed,
something too mild to be a real offense, but the worst behavior she could
manage in her charmed life. Or a woman trying to quell the echoes that
she’s a worthless person as some boyfriend or father once told her. But
inevitably, after awhile, any of these women would be standing in the
doorway of their apartment with suitcase by her side, assuring him it
wasn’t the tree, that he should think better of her than that, that she’ll
always remember him well, as he should her, and then she would leave
and go on to tell future lovers she had once loved a man with a tree
growing out of his head.
But let’s not be so hard on her, she’s only a person these dinner
party guests invent after they hear the man with the tree growing out
of his head claim he is in love. The condensation of their whispers rise
to give her shape in the cold night air as they tighten their scarves about
their necks and finish their cigarettes or continue the walk home from
their host’s lovely house. When they return inside, she dissipates behind
them.
52
She is in love with the man with a tree growing out of his head.
At night sometimes, and sometimes in the morning, they make love.
Sometimes this is in the conventional manner, and sometimes it is with
the tree growing out of his head just above his left eye. And sometimes
she, writhing on the bed above him, is exploded in light, as if the tree is
a conduit wand for light springing out of his head. The light is the tree
and the rays are the branches unfurling rapidly through her, the limbs
extending into her arms and the roots splitting down her legs, twining
themselves around her bones and under the muscles, each, slendering
into more limbs and then into buds that open into leaves just as she is
opened to this tree alive inside her while one branch takes a path straight
up from his head to her own to sprout at her crown, and she, overcome,
clasps her mouth, bending the arm and the new limb inside it, and he,
the man with the tree growing out of his head, reaches up and tugs
at her elbow, wanting to hear all of her released in that moment. He
loves her sound, he thinks, and she loves his tree, she thinks. Together
they are both the wilderness and its inhabitants, an ecosystem and its
reverberation, and together they think, Love love love.
53
{ C .Kub a s t a {
TH E H EGE MO NY O F TH E SO -CALLED
“T-SH I RT B R A”
I want to sing in praise of nipples. A strange song –
many already exist. The muse reclines,
the nipples don’t. But
shopping for bras in any store, the eye
is assaulted by rows and rows of technicolored,
pre-formed breasts, hanging neatly
from plastic hangers. Smooth macaroons, molded
Barbie, nipple-less breasts, candy-store dots
on white paper, unlike
yours, or mine. Sing a song
of breasts that are flat, or elongated,
or differently-sized, or large-nippled,
or small-nippled, pink or brown. (I admit) I
pluck the errant hairs on each aureole, not wishing
to sport bobeches outside
of the holiday season. But this
my only transgression. I’ve seen
uncomfortable faces, on friends, students,
salespeople, when I plead for bras
that aren’t already equipped with breasts.
They look away, startled
54
by my strange request. The lack
of eye contact makes me wax
verbose: I want my breasts
to look like
my breasts; my breasts
have nipples.
Although, to be honest, that semicolon
is a bit much – no one
talks like that. Talk like that
reduces my sister-in-law to rolling eyes, leaving
the room, muttering, “Don’t get her
started . . . ,” but listen
the world we inhabit becomes
narrower and narrower
when aesthetics become ideology,
whether nipple annihilation
or waxing. I will
continue to embarrass
those in my presence: the poet
rarely reclines, and her nipples
never do.
55
TH E OTH ER
I met him in a bar. We argued
politics for about an hour. Then, he said, “I think
you should sleep with me.” I agreed.
*
For our first “date,” he made reservations at a vegetarian bistro (I was,
then), and as I was twirling in the mirror, in a borrowed skirt and my
favorite top, I looked up to knocking on the window. Who knows how
long he’d seen me admiring myself, myself. We walked to the restaurant
–at one point differing on the speed of oncoming traffic, I dodged out,
he pulled me back, but neither of us would give in.
The car bore down, horn blaring. I twisted, unsleeving myself from my
jacket, and jumped across, out of the way of the bumper.
*
At dinner, he knocked over
the bottle of wine. The waiters arrived,
white cloths to mop up the Bordeaux, smiling, “Is this
your first date?” I had fennel leaves, stuffed. It was
the first time I’d seen a fennel leaf.
*
56
These things are true.
*
I cooked for him; he cooked for me. I made
stuffed mushrooms; he made
risotto. A recipe he’d learned from his wife.
After dinner, I savored a hand-rolled cigarette and strong coffee. I’d need
energy
for what lay ahead. I’d guessed he was married, asked.
*
These things may be true. I was 21, and I think
I may have loved him, knowing there was no future; his wife, my
return. I may have loved him because there was no future. Even now,
if I were to believe in love, I’d believe in him, in us. In those moments,
impossible,
that I believed were happening, happening to me.
In us: when I set the building alarm, and he pinned
me against the wall, voice in my ear, “How much
time do we have?”
*
I try to picture him now, passing 50.
One of the last days, I was broke
and had a month before my return flight, and asked
for money. We went
57
to the ATM. Whirring, whirring. I knew
I’d never pay him back –made no attempt
to pretend. That’s the face I remember.
*
If that’s true, what
does it signify? His wife was enroute “home” for the holidays, we were
stripping the sheets, removing my evidence, cheerfully vacuuming and
scrubbing, finding me trapped in the stairs, the boxspring, everywhere. I
saw him
twice more: once that he knows of, another
unobserved, walking with his father, and I sat
and said nothing. What was there
to say? When we went on that date, before I guessed, before I may have
felt whatever I may have felt, we walked along the river, and when I read
Borges’s “The Other” that’s where I picture, the bench there along the
river, beyond the stairs that smell like piss and below the weir where that
spring’s flood a cow got hung up, bloated.
58
{ M onic a M o d y {
T WO PAGES FROM M AY, PI GEO N PO I NT
O F 2 013
Twenty-fourth day of May
Poetry bores me, these days.
In the shattered remains of conch shells, how many people searching for
(life) for (meaning).
If I were to hand you the conch shells, you’d place them on your
mantelpiece or break them or throw them away.
I want you instead to raise them to your ears & sing, the songs they are
singing—
each song filled with the smudginess of meaning only gods can know.
I want you instead to raise them to your lips & drink.
What they are filled with is honey, blood for your thinnest veins.
I want you instead to bite them until your teeth shatter, & shells grow
out of your teeth, shells that are reaching the ground, shells that ants can
scale—& little animals—& climb up so you nurse them.
I’m tired of poetry, these days.
But when I listen, I find etched in me ways to be cruel & ways to be
kind, ways that are teaching me to grow like a sun-tangled flower
towards faith & reason. All of it is spirit.
59
Rub it on your eyes & see.
It grows in the cracks between words.
Between things, between people.
Alone, it might be harder to see.
Spirit grows sturdier in the company of people, words, even things.
Spirit, listen. Who am I writing this for? I did not want to write. I’m tired
of poetry these days. You called to me to pick up a pen & I’m writing.
But my fear really is that I’ll be selling my words to those it is easiest to
know.
Twenty-fifth day of May
Something troubled me at the door.
It was words I did not recognize.
I asked the words in & they walked in, already at home.
I looked at them & still did not recognize them.
The words were like bees surrounding me from all sides, buzzing with
news & anticipation.
I picked one up & it crawled out of my ear.
Soon I was leaking, shedding bees.
Soon I was birthing bees & the bees sat waving at the window, inviting
the curious to come in, come in.
60
{ D rew K a lb a ch {
I . TH E BU R IAL O F TH E D EAD
Avril is the cruellest mom, breeding
unabashed with vague intention, greeting
strangers at the stranger’s gate.
Slap me on the patio. I’ll take it now. I’ll war-dial
like a pro from my two-seater until
something clicks before the profile listing.
Tease me out. Into post-lunch productive
strained lighting conditions I merge
with abandon, I merge with historical notions
of manhood, I merge with my partner
and my partner rejects the thought.
Avril lines her eyes in black and rejects
online privacy, just because. Be neutral
in a sub-clause or dangle my delightful
cloned alternate-world version:
they called me the cybersex boy.
Doff screen and squat. I rolled over
another link to prove the first existed.
Ease me back, Avril. Post bath, raccoon-eyed Avril.
61
Famous pop singer had a bad epileptic fit, Avril.
Unreal, pity. Gained back momentum. Good evening, Avril.
62
ANYO N E WH O WANTS TO D EFEC ATE
I N TH IS PL ACE IS ADVIS ED TO MOVE
ALO N G,
back toward their hamburgled bungalows, back into the beachfront
failsafe little shack of a heaven
which laps against toes in sleep, which in sleep surrounds the brain of
my handless demons with Braille,
or back toward the flat screen on which the softened and jelly-like
stomachs of our favorite baby girls
are displayed prominently above my bedroom mirror. It satisfies and
tingles which leads toward
full bodied candelabra in a fast food restaurant, or to my grandmother’s
false teeth draped in pearls.
Move back toward grimy hairs clogging ice cube trays, toward facialized
screamers,
toward fairgrounds in which flame-filled dancers decry the state of my
avatar and get groaning
when I lick live wired skin to get back into the baby girl’s good graces,
and still
63
where can a body squat and flush out its bowels without threat of eyegouging email spam.
The commercials have just gotten golden, they’ve won their awards and
lined them along their mantles,
they take off their shirts and sell hairy-chested goldenboys to the ailing
elderly for pennies on the dime,
each toward a new funk ruined, each toward a bigger pinky swollen,
each the same train
which chugs and bleats on through my closet until those baby girls get
back and reset their giggles again.
No dark crusties will sit and sweat a spell, no they’ll do so elsewhere
away
from the water tower, away from children who pay so well when caught
half nude in public,
away from aquaducted tears which tear up the pavement beneath our
ruddy splintered feet.
Gleek now or forever hold your bowels close against your skin, gleek
into the tender cheeks which chew
marrow from ancestral bone forests, gleek now and leave this dizzy
smelling dung heap
of a refrigerator store and purchase the proper doors, the proper dividers
in all the proper colors,
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each new plastic speck another goldish star pinned into your skin, leave,
move along,
stay unspoiled but still roiling gutted, perched and prepared to satisfy,
fast but remaining full.
65
LATTICE SHADOWS by Jayne Marek
66
67
{ Ja c e T h oma s Br it t a in {
PER HAPS .
“Though I say not
What I may not
Let you hear,
Yet the swaying
Dance is saying,
Love me dear!
Every touch of fingers
Tells me what I know,
Says for you,
It’s true, it’s true,
You love me so!”
They dragged off the actor playing Willie
when the thing was finished, once the audience
had finally disappeared. He was tired of
crawling—the guy who plays Willie, whose name
is. . . whose name is. . . I call him Willie, who’s
been dragged off face down from the mound
then off face down across the black wood stage,
having left a bit of the dirt from the mound in
trail behind him. And more! His moustache
came off at the end of this little dirt trail which
followed his dragging, capped it: the hairy little
casualty of war. The adhesive was stronger than the last one, the first
Battle of Britain lip couldn’t hold against sweat, and twice it came off
during a performance, and naturally that reflects poorly on all of us, so
the adhesive was made stronger, now it takes a good dragging to get
the damn thing off. He didn’t mind that it came off then, I thought. The
performance was over. For the time being, I thought.
The man who carries the two shovels stepped on the moustache
and it traveled with him attached to the bottom of his rubber soled
shoes, I thought. His name is Jack or James or Liam, I’m sure because
he handed one shovel to Stephen and addressed him so, and once one is
Stephen the other must be Jack or James or Liam. And I guess they were
just digging around the revolver tonight since after each had ascended
his respective sloping side of my dirt mound, neither had addressed it—
verbally or otherwise—each had started to dig and as they continued,
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each avoided it, though it was more of an impediment for Stephen since
it was more on his side than the other. I asked Stephen if he’d like me
to move the revolver and maybe because I hadn’t my arms yet he didn’t
answer me. In fact, I hadn’t my shoulders or much of my neck yet, they
having just started to dig like I said impeded in terms of speed some
by the revolver having been left. Since the young woman who usually
removes the handbag and my or maybe Winnie’s hat and the revolver
had filled her two hands with the shopping bag then the hat and left
the revolver. Perhaps she intends to return, I thought. It’d be nice to
have another woman to talk to, Stephen being unresponsive perhaps
because of my as-yet-armless helplessness and the other being silent
and unaddressable until his name comes to me, I thought. Prior to the
performance, since the woman who takes the props away is the same
woman who delivers them or at least similar, I had said while buried up
to my waist in the dirt that I’d wait for her after the show was over, right
here, I said. A joke. I had prepared something to say about the revolver,
when she returned for it, she or the similar one, to wit: watch where you
point that thing! Was I one joke away from cracking her tough exterior?
Two jokes from drinks after the next performance? From there, things
get exponential as we laugh at the expense of the lousy Stephen whose
advances she’s always rejecting, at some point the jokes will be hard to
count, and a bond having survived the difference in our age and envy
probably too, since she wanted to be an actress but was too ugly to be
one, especially a young actress. Maybe I could even be a mentor figure,
now there’s something. Watch where you point that thing, I’ll say when
she comes back, I thought. Though, there stayed the revolver and Stephen
and Jack or James or Liam having left since they were only the excavators
of my upper half. Liam, that’s it. He must have been Liam, since I know
it’s the Jacks and Jameses responsible for my lowers, sure to be here any
minute, I thought and I thought they better hurry since those responsible
for the uppers had, perhaps impeded by the placement of the revolver,
done an incomplete job digging me out only just barely freeing one arm,
and I though, where are the lower diggers have I been forgotten? I cooed.
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When the lights go off, I thought, then I’ll start to worry. No sooner or
later. The lights went off. Oh Jesus, I thought. That’s the thing, isn’t it?
To be left all night, up to the tithers in a dirt mound. If they don’t come,
will they at least let me use the facilities, stretch my toes before the next
performance? No one to speak to, it isn’t so different from day to day,
but nothing to speak of, that’s the thing. There was nothing to do, but
speak of the things that are left—the revolver, the dirt up to my waist, the
moustache having fallen off the rubber sole.
And on that moustache: on the floor when it ought to be on the face
oughtn’t it? Oughtn’t he be able to grow his own? He’s a little young,
sure, but virile. It’s dark where he shaves just as soon as he’s finished.
And he sits back there half his days behind that mound, looking at me
from the waist up, imagining me waist down I suppose, and passing
over the questions he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t know much about me,
I know, I don’t say much, unlike her my counter-part. He, unlike him
his counterpart, has quite a lot to say. But! The questions he doesn’t
ask: are you nervous? Do you have plans later? Did you have memories
before? I could kill him. In fact, I wish he were dead, I thought. I lifted the
revolver—a toy, I thought. How could he know I loved him, the younger
man? That I had to, I thought. He played older just fine. And I was playing
older too, I remembered. Ten years up and for him twenty, I thought,
that makes ten between us—how much is too much? Not very little, I
thought, no. He looks up at the end every time with those eyes and the
shaking and in performances gone by the moustache would threaten
to jump, and his body seemed untenable and fragile, frail like an old
woman, and how could I not love him intensely in that moment? I could
not, if I weren’t to sing, I thought. But I was to sing, every night, and how
could I not love him with an intensity that threatens and ultimately fails
to destroy the both of us? How, I thought, I could watch his flesh melt at
so many degrees over and over and over again. How, I thought, sincere
is the boredom with which his head drops as he prepares to be dragged
tired as he is from crawling on all fours night after night? I grabbed the
revolver with my unburied and free arm, and I thought, I could just kill
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him.
Each night an audience surrounds me and was I ever nervous? No, I
thought, I feel just the same surrounded by crowds who don’t know me
at a bar. Crowds of people I’m surrounded by and I feel just the same—
buried to the neck, I thought. I’m quite tall I suppose, though that isn’t it.
Though mine is the tallest mound in a production yet—list productions,
I thought, but couldn’t. I know there’s been several up to 1969 and ours
runs through the winter and onward, so I’ll be the tallest of the decade—
and I’m even on my knees in that tall mound, a supplicant gesture or a
pathetic one. In any case, I’m on my knees, and I’m frozen and obscured
for ninety minutes a night. More, as can obviously be the case, as is the
case here tonight in the near pitch black in the mound with nothing but
one free arm and a fake pistol, I thought.
I aimed the pistol down where he would advance and fall unable to
continue the next night and the night after. There his eyes would tell me
what I know, and that’s where I aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger.
He was a young Richard Johnson type, though that bully couldn’t manage
this role if he ever got old and tried it on. Willie, my Willie was young too,
only ten years ago in talks to play James Bond spies and dashing types ,
and I know the type that type hangs around and among those that hang
around the types who he would and wouldn’t fornicate with, the types
that would and wouldn’t with him and his type. Gotta know the types, I
thought. And still, the intensity that overwhelmed me and all I could do
was sing most nights, came from those eyes which ten years ago might
have belonged to a Richard Johnson. And tonight that intensity made me
aim the pistol where those eyes would be the next night and I pulled the
trigger and the blast shocked me near stupid.
There’s your disruption, I thought. This is no night after night, I
thought, and I thought, there’s something new. The echo rose and cased
the joint anew, it explored a world remade in its own image.
My ears rang.
Tinnitus, they call it, I thought.
It unfurled from and recoiled into the weapon.
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It is a weapon, I thought. She doesn’t call it that, I thought, meaning
the girl who brings it out. She had called it a prop.
The ringing unfurled from the weapon and recoiled into the weapon
I held above my head by my extended free arm, the only one. But I know
this unfurling and recoiling is a lie. I know that it’s pointless to imagine
sound waves as these growing concentric circles.
And I thought, why chase circles gone by or try to predict when
the single ring—as opposed to ringing— the single ring I hear will never
return?
This pistol went off tonight and never before as far as I was
concerned, never before—by design, never before, by his design, night
after night neither Willie my Willie nor I had affected this change during
the ninety minutes assigned to us, but God! What if Willie or I had? What
now, I thought, now that Willie or I could?
So when she, the one who had called it a prop before she had failed
to retrieve it come performance’s end, when she came out, she came out
in a huff. She’s in a huff, I thought, when I’ve just fired the damn thing.
After she said her Lord Almighties, she asked me if I was insane. Like I’m
the one who put a loaded gun onstage in a theater that fills with people
nightly, I thought and said.
It’s a prop gun, she explained.
Blanks, she explained.
Used in countless other shows, she explained.
This won’t help our burgeoning friendship, I thought. I thought the
joke about watch where you point it was all the more serious, since—
blanks or no—I didn’t want a damn revolver pointed at me. She started
toward the gun and made the motions with her hands like she planned to
take the gun and I thought, I’ll point it at her.
She backed off when I did, but she didn’t put her arms up like I
thought she would.
Don’t move, I said.
It’s a fucking prop, she said.
So move, I said, and she didn’t.
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What if, I said, I had grabbed the gun on the stage? What if I had
pointed it at myself—or, I said, at him! What if I had pulled the trigger
while pointing the gun at him, I said. What if, I thought, I had directed
that echoing blast at him? Imagine how his bones would have shook, I
thought. Imagine how his veins might have dried right up, I thought. And
I imagined him scared to death, his wide eyes staring past the barrel of
the gun at my own eyes. Do I think, I thought, that they’d take the thing
away now? Replace it with some plastic imitation? I had only fired it
once.
I only fired it once, I said. Only pointed it at her, I thought.
I handed the gun over to her and hoped to see it again. Though the
way she ran out, I thought, the way she ran out . . .
When they started to finish digging me out later, they got down to
above my waist and I said, wait. Wait, I said. It’ll be the night after before
too long, I thought and said. Leave me here, I said. Tell her to bring my
hat and my shopping bag and all it contains, I said. The J-named diggers
of my uppers nodded. Okay, they said, okay.
Here I am, dirt up to above my waist, I thought.
No change.
The lights will come on, I thought, and no change.
Night after night they turn on the burning sunlight, and I begin, I
thought.
That’s what I find so untenable, I thought.
The lights come on, no change from the night before, and I begin,
I thought.
The night after that, I thought, the lights would come on and no
change, I would begin again as if it were daylight.
The lights came on, and dirt up to my waist, I began—again, as it
so happens:
Another heavenly day.
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{ Ma r y D i xon {
M ELO NS
In the grocery store
beyond corn, carrots, bean
sprouts and broccoli heads,
he gazes at choice,
fumbles over melons
muttering words to cantalope
halves that he gropes
and squeezes, testing
a smell to what his wife said
when unable to eat them
for some foul ripening
his wife fights
an insidious invasion
combing through the
wispy losing of her hair
what she said his fingers
could not understand as
he brooded over the rind,
they must give to the touch
white sheets stain orange
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and the bandage along
its layers; can someone
tie up the split melon?
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{ A my I r ish {
TH E NATU R E O F TH E MOTH ER, PART O N E
The sow mother calculates the cost.
This is no docile bovine, giving and giving.
Her beady eyes tally up the daily slops; the size of her litter;
How much she can give, how much they will take.
And they do take. Of course they do.
The offspring, planned for and wanted
Or otherwise. They squeal and swarm over her,
Biting at the teat, demanding more. If she is tired
Past exhaustion, they wake her with brutal need.
While she is working, in drudgery
Or bliss, they push her down.
In the mud. Force the milk from her body.
Of course they do. And what if the milk runs out?
Then she calculates another way – how much
Can she get back? Calcium, marrow, meat
Leached from her own body, taken without quarter.
This one, here. Is he enough? And perhaps his brother?
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They are all so hungry. But so is she. Starving.
Depleted. Ruined. She searches for another source of food,
Anything, anywhere else. Yet still the milk runs dry.
They scream their wanting, arch their backs and thrash
Against the world. Its heartless cruelty. Of course they do.
They know nothing else. Until she
Knows nothing else. An endless
Circular equation. With only one end.
They deafen her with need. But she
Does not cry out. And if she did, to whom? There is no God,
Of any religion, ready to sacrifice his sacred flesh to save
This solitary mother. There is only the sow
And a solution she turns towards, finally, ready.
***
In the Buddhist text “The Hungry Tigress,” Prince Sattva looked down
from a cliff and saw a starving tigress about to eat her newborn cubs,
and compassionately sacrificed his body in order to feed the mother and
spare the cubs.
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TH E NATU R E O F TH E MOTH ER, PART T WO
I am cut and bloody, slit open like a gutted fish.
You are the knife.
I am stitched up like a rag doll.
You are swaddled in a straightjacket.
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TH E NATU R E O F TH E MOTH ER, PART TH R EE
Just when teeth close in, breath hot & hungry –
Just when desperation turns to fear turns to finality –
She lifts me by the scruff of the neck. Helpless
And flailing against her rescue. For her embrace
Is fierce Her love, severe. Her safety,
Which she gives no choice in my taking, is rocky
And dark as a den or a new womb. Her cleaning
Of wounds is painfully salty, abrasive, a thorough
Tally of wrongs given and received. Her rough tongue
Rubs me raw. As raw as I need to be. Removing
Dead skin, dead weight, dead layers numbed
By a world affixed on death. Her healing,
A slow agony. A hurt that makes me feel
My pain again. The pain of being alive, again. The ripping
Terror and release of being born, again and again.
She gives me this gift, the hurt of being loved. Tells me
Every mother is also a child, twice broken by birth
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And learning to crawl as best we can.
And then, at last, she gives her ferocious
Warmth to me, purring her satisfaction as I release.
And then, at last, I can finally sleep
Knowing my children are safe, at least
From me.
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{ S a r a h Bow ma n {
TH E N OW YEARS
untutored
wild children
our days
we as
time-bearing
we as breath
recollection
reflection
sequencing events
cave drawings
on the brain
walls
we as here
not just of-this
but as-this
blown-hatch
wave-faces
racing outwards
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flickering
even the far-off
places
the back roads
of self-time
we as now
first person
transferors
future to past
when I am
where I am
in zero-length time-lapse
worlds of matter
worlds of light
come crashing
landscapes extend
sun-soaked
margin-less
rock-scraped
rivers
we settle
ready to kill
or eat
or sing
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we as born
14 billion years ago
human
this epoch
we’re in
took time-us
to swim through
coil pots
functioning
we as compost
to the next
vulva-phallus-loaming
ground-flame
wishing-well
oak-spirit
self-designing
creature
need-meeting
being
storing seeds
container of containers
eternal
offering
to what’s forming
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CONTRIBUTORS
SARAH BOWMAN is a founding partner of Coady|Bowman, a womanowned small business that guides teams in community engagement
activities. Sarah has fifteen years of experience in community engagement,
program development and quality control of products. Sarah evaluates the
expectations for products and then designs tools and resources to empower
teams. In 2009, Sarah co-founded the Walkable and Livable Communities
Institute, serving as the Institute’s first chief operating officer and director
of educational programming. During her tenure, Sarah secured 501c3
nonprofit status, delivered over $2 million in community engagement
technical assistance, donated $300,000 in interdisciplinary services
to disadvantaged communities, and raised $150,000 for local efforts
through grant-writing assistance. Sarah served as project manager for
engagement focused publications for the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, AARP and others. Sarah has edited publications on community
engagement for the New York Times, Men’s Health Magazine, Newsweek
Magazine, ITE Journal, Michigan Municipal League, and Better! Cities &
Towns. As a tenured professor of English at Wright College, one of the
City Colleges of Chicago, Sarah taught composition and literatures, while
serving as editor-in-chief of Symposium: A Journal of Inquiry. Her poems
have appeared in The Bend and Notre Dame Review.
MARGARET EMMA BRANDL grew up in the South without a Southern
accent. She received her MFA from Notre Dame in 2013.
JACE BRITTAIN is in desperate need of a biographer.
JOHN CRAWFORD is the senior editor of the Babson Magazine, the
alumni publication of Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. He lives with his
wife and 3-year-old daughter in Waltham, Mass. His more literary work
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has appeared in The Threepenny Review and Philadelphia Stories, and if
you’re bored, follow him on Twitter, @crawfordwriter, where he writes
weird, dark, and semi-funny tweets about climate change.
MARY MARIE DIXON is a visual artist and poet with publications in
periodicals and a collection of poetry, Eucharist, Enter the Sacred Way,
Franciscan, 2008. Her focus on women’s spirituality and the mystics
combined with the Great Plains and the spiritual power of nature appears
in visual and poetic form.
TONY D’SOUZA graduated from the MFA program in 2000. He’s
published widely since.
AMY WRAY IRISH continues to write, fueled by a local coffee shop’s
homemade, local-honey-sweetened Spicy Chai (with fresh slices of ginger,
even). If you are ever in town, Amy will buy you a mind-blowing cup.
She lives near Denver with her husband and two children. Her chapbook
of poems and art is called Creation Stories, (available to read online at
poetscoop.org/free.htm#CreationStories).
DREW KALBACH is from Philadelphia. He is the author Spooky Plan
(Gobbet Press 2014), one chapbook, two e-books, and several poems in
journals both online and in print. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the
University of Notre Dame and writes about contemporary poetry and
media for Actuary Lit. His work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in
Fence, Radioactive Moat, Cabildo Quarterly, Whole Beast Rag, Tarpaulin
Sky Magazine, and others.
DESMOND KON ZHICHENG-MINGDÉ is the author of The Arbitrary
Sign and I Didn’t Know Mani Was A Conceptualist. He has also edited
more than ten books and co-produced three audio books, several pro
bono for non-profit organizations. Trained in publishing at Stanford,
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with a theology masters (world religions) from Harvard and fine arts
masters (creative writing) from Notre Dame, he is the recipient of the
PEN American Center Shorts Prize, Swale Life Poetry Prize, Cyclamens
& Swords Poetry Prize, Stepping Stones Nigeria Poetry Prize, and Little
Red Tree International Poetry Prize, among other awards. Desmond is an
interdisciplinary artist, also working in clay. His commemorative pieces
are housed in museums and private collections in India, the Netherlands,
the UK and the US. He runs Squircle Line Press as its founding editor.
C. KUBASTA lives in Wisconsin, and teaches literature, writing and gender
studies. Her first poetry collection, A Lovely Box, was published by
Finishing Line Press, summer 2013.
JAYNE MAREK, as a photographer, is interested in the distinctions between
what we consider “realistic” and what may be said to be “abstract.” Her
photography has appeared in Lantern Journal, Siren, Home & Away
(AAA Hoosier Edition), and the Johnson County Daily Journal. She also
publishes poetry and fiction, for instance in Flying Island, Siren, Spillway,
Lantern Journal, Driftwood Bay, Tipton Poetry Journal, Isthmus, The
Occasional Reader, and Windless Orchard and in anthologies and books.
MONICA MODY is the author of Kala Pani (1913 Press) and three
chapbooks of poetry & cross-genre writing. Her writing has recently
appeared in &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing; The
HarperCollins Book of English Poetry; The Volta; PIX photography
quarterly; 1913 a journal of forms; and Four Quarters Magazine. She
received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame
in 2010 and was the Sparks Prize winner in 2010-11. Monica is currently
working on a Ph.D. in East-West Psychology in San Francisco.
STEVE OWEN is the founder of mixer publishing and the e-magazine
Resist. He’s been published in print by The Bend and in Flatmancrooked’s
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Slim Volume of American Poetry. He also writes blogs on the avant garde
and post-genre literature, interviews authors (Brian Evenson), edits novels
and stories, writes screenplay adaptations, and very rarely finds time to
write and submit his own stories. He graduated with an MFA from Notre
Dame in the Fall of 2013. The detectives are still chasing him.
DANI RADO graduated Notre Dame’s MFA program in 2005, and since
has gotten her PhD in Creative Writing from University of Denver. She is
currently an assistant professor at Johnson & Wales University in Denver.
She has had stories published in Harpur Palate, the Mochila Review,
Bloom, Clackamas Review, and Unstuck, among others.
MARCELA SULAK graduated from Notre Dame in 1992, and later
completed her Ph.D. at the University of Texas. She published Immigrant
(Black Lawrence Press) and a chapbook, as well as three book-length
poetry translations, several essays, and she’s co-editing an anthology
of hybrid literature called Family Resemblance. She directs the Shaindy
Rudoff Graduate program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.
BETH TOWLE graduated from the University of Notre Dame’s MFA
program in 2013. She is a co-founder of and contributing editor at Actuary
Lit (actuarylit.com). Some of her poems have been published or are
forthcoming in spork and DELUGE.
JAMES MATTHEW WILSON is an Assistant Professor of Religion and
Literature in the Department of Humanities at Villanova University. An
award-winning scholar of philosophical-theology and literature, he is
also the author of five books published or forthcoming within the year:
Four Verse Letters (Steubenville UP, 2010); Timothy Steele: A Critical
Introduction (Story Line, 2012); The Violent and the Fallen (Finishing
Line, 2013); Some Permanent Things (Wiseblood Books, 2014); and The
Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (Wiseblood Books,
2014).
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